Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word biscuit arrives from the Old French term bescuit, which traces back to two Latin roots where bis means twice and coctus means cooked or baked. This etymological root describes a literal cooking process where food undergoes baking followed by drying in a slow oven.
Royal Navy ships sailing during the Spanish Armada in 1588 issued one pound of biscuit daily to each sailor. Samuel Pepys regularized naval victualling in 1667 with varied rations including these durable foods that could survive rough handling and high temperatures on ships.
An Armenian monk named Grégoire de Nicopolis brought gingerbread techniques to Europe in 992. He lived in Bondaroy France near Pithiviers for seven years teaching French priests how to bake spice breads.
In the United States sweet flour-based baked items are called cookies rather than biscuits while savoury versions become crackers instead of biscuits in American usage. The Isle of Man Ireland and Scotland use cookie to refer specifically to sweeter dough containing chocolate chips or raisins.
Cracker doughs contain water between fifteen and twenty-five percent before baking. Their water content drops from about twelve percent down to one point five to three percent during the cooking process.